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Avid Connect was probably the most hotly-anticipated of IBC’s opening conferences in our office, and judging by what we’ve heard back so far, it didn’t disappoint…

4K Media Composer

The big news of the day was the announcement of a 4K-friendly version of Media Composer, which is due to drop later this year. 4K support comes courtesy of a new architecture called Avid Resolution Independence, which the senior vice president of products and technology Chris Gahagan says will allow editors to “efficiently manage, edit, and deliver high-res media.”

“Media Composer will solve [current] issues by enabling video professionals to work with native 4K formats in realtime, and create the high quality, inspiring content that today’s audiences demand—all using their existing production infrastructure and workflows.” It’ll also mean you spend less time transcoding, ingesting and generally hanging around watching your computer think, which is never a bad thing.

Introducing DNxHR

Not content with upping Media Composer’s resolution, Avid have also announced a new codec called DNxHR. The new codec will be at the centre of Avid’s Resolution Independence Architecture, which is being built into MediaCentral Platform, as it allows editors to scale from proxy to mastering resolutions in order to perform editorial tasks using full res rasters.

GB Labs have confirmed that their IBC 2014 lineup will include their new 4K Duo On-Set and HyperSpace solutions, plus insight into LTO LTFS. Stand 7.J15b in Hall 7 is the place to be for NAS, apparently…

HyperSpace

According to GB Labs’ press release, “HyperSpace brings SSD performance levels to HDD NAS storage systems,” and can increase the speed of Space by up to 400%.

As their sales and marketing director Ben Pearce explains: “Many of our customers require large capacities – up to 1.7PB – and very high performance for demanding media applications and large workgroups. Our new Space HDD platform has fulfilled these needs for most clients. However, certain deployments require DPX image sequence capabilities or very large HD stream counts for concurrent editing, transcoding and rendering. The random access capabilities of HyperSpace are ideally suited to these environments.

“HyperSpace’s SSD hardware and control software combine to preserve the life of the disks and intelligently manage the way the system uses its resources. Unlike the earlier generation of hybrid HDD/SSD disk systems that were designed for general IT deployments, HyperSpace is optimized for heavy duty usage in media environments. The GB Labs system incorporates entirely new technology which easily outperforms the offerings of existing hybrid storage manufacturers, in terms of real-world media usage and long term reliability.”

Conscious that more and more filmmakers are shooting straight to SSD, GB Labs have equipped the 4K Duo On-Set with dual built-in SSD readers with a combined speed of up to 1000 Mbps, meaning a faster turnaround on used disks. Third party readers can be connected via USB or eSATA.

Once your data’s in the 4K Duo On-Set, it’s stored in a RAID protected array, where it can be accessed by Windows, OS X and Linux systems workstations via Ethernet. There’s no maximum number of clients that can connect, and the files themselves can be copied to tape storage (the 4K Duo has twin LTO-6 drives which run at 160 Mbps) or used for on-set colouring or editing.

Do you want up to 6TB of the fastest SSD storage on the planet? Of course you do. LaCie’s Thunderbolt d2 offers an SSD expansion that takes it to a ridiculous 1150 Mbps.

Let’s review: first, the soundtrack on that video would have been huge in 2002. Second, the obvious killer feature here is that SSD upgrade, which quintuples your speeds and adds 128GB of PCIe SSD storage to your d2. This will be available in October, with the US price rag predicted to be $299 (we’ll report on UK prices as soon as we have them.)

In the meantime, you’ve got a Thunderbolt 2/USB 3.0 unit with a 7200 RPM hard disk of up to 6TB, all wrapped in an aluminium body that’s designed to be near-silent and offer fan-free cooling – the body draws heat away from the hard disk and allows it to dissipate through the base. The base itself is cushioned to minimise vibration, and there are also vibration-absorbing disk mounts built in.

As well as being compatible with Time Machine for easy backup, the Thunderbolt 2 d2 ships bundled with LaCie’s own backup software, so you really have no excuse not to double down on key files. It also includes LaCie’s Public-Private software, which allows you to protect storage volumes using AES 256-bit encryption.

Avid have announced that the MBox range of audio interfaces has been discontinued. Instead, two new products will be available which will fill the gap for portable audio interfaces in the Pro Tools line. However, this time around the hardware itself is being made by Apogee rather than Avid themselves.

The Pro Tools Duet is an Apogee Duet co-branded with Avid, and ships with a full licence of Pro Tools 11. It offers two mic/line inputs and two outputs, and takes the place of the MBox 3.

The Pro Tools Quartet is a co-branded Apogee Quartet, and also ships with a full licence of Pro Tools 11. Aimed at a customer requiring more I/O than the MBox range, it offers four mic/line inputs, six outputs and ADAT inputs as well. This complement of I/O makes it more like the precious 002 and 003 interfaces.

As well as being branded in Avid livery, there is another key difference between the Avid Duet and Quartet and their Apogee namesakes – whereas the Apogee-branded interfaces are available for Mac and iOS only, their Avid counterparts will work on Mac and Windows computers. In addition, there is an “Avid” take on the Maestro control panel.

This is the first time a Pro Tools interface has been made by a third party since the original MBox (made by Focusrite) was released in 2002.

We’ve always been big fans of Teradek’s – their releases are innovative, reliable, and look a bit like Bond gadgets from the seventies, all of which we highly approve of – so it’s probably not a surprise that we want to get our hands on their new Beam unit at IBC.

The Beam is a camera-back H.264 encoder capable of handling bit rates of up to 50 Mbps. Teradek tell us that it can transmit 1080p over 2500 feet with only two frames of latency, all using the unlicensed (and therefore blissfully free) 5K band.

Connectivity wise, you get 3G-SDI, a LAN port for broadcast and a bi-directional serial port for camera control.

The Bean is available with an AB or V mount battery plate, so it’ll fit with any professional camera you care to use. According to Teradek’s official blurb, “Beam is multicast capable to up to 4 receivers and includes a dedicated bidirectional IFB channel, which allows a news operations center to speak directly to the camera operator in the field. Beam also supports high power transmission on the 5.15 ~ 5.25GHz band in accordance with FCC regulations. This means that your wireless video feed will be more resilient and get better range.”

Following the launch of COLORWAY in July, The Foundry has now launched the COLORWAY kit for MAXON CINEMA 4D. COLORWAY accelerates the creative design process, giving users access to a simple environment where they can develop looks and lighting for 3D objects and scenes, then share a selection of iterations with clients, all in real-time, without the need to re-render.

The COLORWAY kit for CINEMA 4D lets users import and export their COLORWAY files into the main app. Once installed, users can create COLORWAY .DCI files from their CINEMA 4D projects. Artists and designers can make their material and lighting adjustments using COLORWAY and then send the project back to CINEMA 4D for final render. The COLORWAY kit is compatible with CINEMA 4D R15 or later.

“We are really excited to bring this COLORWAY integration to CINEMA 4D. Expanding the COLORWAY ecosystem so that CINEMA 4D users can access our new software is a really important step for us. We want people to be able to create their assets in their favorite 3D app and experiment with this cool new technology,” says Matt Brealey, COLORWAY Product Manager at The Foundry.

“CINEMA 4D is our 3D software package of choice and an integral design tool in all our campaigns. Access to COLORWAY is easy and exporting from C4D as simple as opening a PDF file. The ability to effortlessly make “look” and lighting revisions will be a valuable, time-saving tool when working on title and logo treatments for movie posters.”

COLORWAY working with CINEMA 4D will be demonstrated at IBC 2014 in Hall 7, stand #H39.

Panasonic are warming up for IBC with an affordable new 4K camcorder, the HC-X1000, and the GoPro-esque HX-A500E, an ‘action cam’ that lets you capture events in 4K using a tiny device.

HC-X1000

Panasonic’s HC-X1000 offers 4K UHD recording to dual SD cards. It’s got a Leica 20x zoom lens, triple manual rings (including an illuminating LED ring) and two XLR inputs, and ships with a high speed HDMI cable. In terms of frame rate, you’re getting UltraHD at 50/60fps, DCI 4K at 24fps and HD recording at 200Mbps, with background, relay and simultaneous recording all available. The magic floating hands shown above are for display purposes only and are not included.

HX-A500E

This tiny unit’s body measures just 59.5 x 94 x 26.7mm, with the camera measuring up at a nearly unnoticeable φ26.5 x 68.5mm and the whole thing (including SD card) weighing just 185g. The A500E records 4K to micro SD or micro SDHC cards in MPREG-4 AVC (.mp4) or Video Recording System MPEG-4/H.264.

Early reviews suggest that the 4K manages to go beyond a gimmick, delivering genuinely crisp, usable footage in a tiny form factor and with minimal spend. Plus it’s available in our team colours, orange and grey, and looks a bit like a prop from Stingray, both of which we enjoy immensely.

If the summer holidays are already beginning to seem like a distant memory, take a look at this ray of fiscal sunshine from Apple, who are offering free iBooks textbooks for the next two weeks.

With freebie titles including AQA-suitable GCSE publications from the likes of Collins on offer, it’s the perfect chance to get your students stocked up on a few textbook essentials – from physics to French.

You can advise students to download the iBooks for personal use, or apply for a bulk iBook code through Apple Volume Purchasing Programme in order to get a class set while they’re free. To get your hands on them, just follow the links below:

IBC 2014 (Stand 7.D07), Boston, MA – September 8, 2014. At IBC, axle will unveil new capabilities and options that significantly broaden the appeal and expand the applications of their unique, “radically simple” approach to media management.

axle addresses the most important media management and workflow needs of video production teams, but unlike other systems is exceptionally easy to install and use. New features, enhancements, and scale will deliver a significant upgrade for existing customers and extend axle’s benefits to midsize broadcasters and departments of larger ones. The unprecedented affordability and ease of setup (typically up and running within hours, rather than days or weeks) has allowed axle to double its sales every six months since its founding in 2012.

Production teams can use this low-cost system for greater speed and agility in planning, pre-edit, and review and approval workflows. axle 2015 software and axle Gear appliances now include axle Chat, which gives the ability to launch live chats with participants anywhere on the internet to jointly review and approve material saved/managed in the system.

axle Edit, an optional iPad-based rough cut editing module allows touch-based subclip selection and sequence assembly on a timeline which can be played back in low resolution on the iPad, then rendered in high-res formats on the axle server. This workflow is ideal for journalistic workflows, where media is acquired on mobile devices and must be integrated with other media stored on main storage.

With a completely re-architected platform, axle media management more than doubles scalability, to over 600,000 media assets. This addresses a common requirement for broadcasters as well as larger postproduction and marketing organisations. The architecture supports multiple coordinated servers, and the system expands incrementally along with customer needs.

axle’s browser-based user interface, which has been widely acclaimed for its uncluttered and intuitive design, gains refinements that provide more powerful operation, workflow speed, and an even cleaner layout.

Advanced customisation and interoperation with a state-of-the-art REST (Representational state transfer) API which provides a powerful yet simple method of linking with other applications and customising for the specific needs of users.

At IBC 2014 axle Video will feature a video which launches a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the value of media management and of axle solutions. Fast-paced music video techniques and an original score support a storyline showing how even the smallest production teams benefit from media management and collaboration. The video can be seen at axle’s home page: www.axlevideo.com.

“It’s hard to believe that axle Video got its start just two years ago at IBC,” said Sam Bogoch, CEO, “and the overwhelming acceptance surprised even us, proving that there’s a big unmet need in the market for a simpler, yet highly capable media management solution.

“With the new version we’ll announce at IBC 2014, however, we’re definitely moving to a new level. If fact, we know we’ll be speaking with many media organizations who could not have considered axle before.”

IBC 2014 will also provide a showcase for axle’s 30 industry partnerships, many of which are exhibiting in Hall 7. IBC attendees can learn more at the axle Video stand, #7-D07, Hall 7, September 12- 16.

Availability and Pricing

axle 2015 software starts at $1,695/€1395 for five users and will be available Q4 2014.

Axle Edit software starts at $795 /€695 for 2 users andwill be available in late Q4 2014.

axle Gear software-hardware bundle starts at $6,995/€5925 for five users and is shipping.

axle Gear Pro software-hardware bundle with Avid compatibility starts at $8,995/€7465 for five users and is shipping.

axle Gear for Adobe Anywhere software-hardware bundle starts at $11,995/€9995 for five users and is shipping.

The Sony stand is always a safe bet if you want to get hands-on with new releases at IBC, and given the raft of updates they’ve announced over the past few months, we’re expecting things to get particularly grabby this year. For anyone who missed the original announcements, here’s a quick recap of what we already know is coming…

PXW-X70

The PXW-Z100,X160 and X180 are already available on our site, with the tardy (but extremely pleasing) PXW-X70 due to follow them soon. This newcomer replaces the older NX70 and PMW-100, offering you a compact XAVC camera that can slot into a broadcast environment. It’ll also be able to stream directly to Ustream from early 2015.

Its 1″ sensor and fixed lens combo put us in mind of the RX100, and this is an ideal camera for anyone who likes to shoot with a shallow depth of field or who wants to make their talking head shots look particularly lush. Features we particularly appreciate include 3G SDI connectivity, its state of 4K readiness and the fact that its two media slots have separate record buttons, so you can shoot the entirety of an event on one card, then selectively record key takes to the other.

PXW-X500

Another new addition we’re hoping to get our hands on at IBC is the PXW-X500, which we’re told will boast three 2/3″ CMOS sensors with horizontal and digital ALAC and will shoot up to 120fps in XAVC mode, or at standard frame rates (ie no slow or fast motion) when shooting in ProRes or DNxHD mode, both of which are available as leasable add-ons.

A nice feature to note on the PXW-X500 is that, while it records to SxS as a rule, there’s also an SD card slot that you can use to record proxies, and both your SD card and your SxS can be formatted to FAT, without the need for extra UDF formatting on the SxS card.

PXW-180 and PXW-160

The PXW-X180, which has gotten the most love from Sony in the buildup to IBC, offers 3x 1/3″ Exmor CMOS sensors, a 25x HD lens and a variable Neutral Density filter. The headline, however, is the fact that the X180 will be getting a firmware update to enable live streaming in early 2015, making it great for ENG and events.

PXW-Z100

Not one to be left out, the PXW-Z100 had bagged itself a pre-show firmware upgrade that “supports 4K/59.59p, 4K/50p, 4K/29.97p, and 4K/25p signal” and adds a slow shutter speed setting in Slow & Quick mode.

HXR-MC2500

Not wanting to look like XAVC fetishists, we should also mention that the HXR-MC2500, a long-awaited follow-up to the MC2000. This new shouldermount model comes with full WiFi and newer field control, so it’s great for event videographers who want to be able to get the perfect angle regardless of whether or not there’s room for them behind the camera; they’ll also appreciate the MC2500’s whopping 14 hour battery life.

We’ve been promised better low light performance and a new, multi-interface shoe that will allow wireless audio in (this also comes with the X160 and X180).

And finally, the A-7S

If you’re more of a mirrorless/DSLR type, pin your IBC hopes on the A-76’s 12 megapixel Full Frame sensor. This means each pixel gets three times as much light as it would in your old A-7R (feel free to align that aside in disgust at this point). In a move we’re particularly pleased by, it offer direct compatibility with the Atomos Shogun, so you can record in Pro Res, though natively it records 50Mbps X-AVC-S interlaced and outputs S-LOG.

Timecode is available over HDMI; zebra and peak meters are included and you can use Canon lenses as long as you pair the camera with an NEX Metabones adaptor, although it is Full Frame, so we’d recommend you shy away from EFS lenses.